Wash. Post: Racial Profiling Rules Will Exempt TSA, Border Patrol

Long-awaited changes in the Justice Department's rules for racial profiling will exempt much of the Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, The Washington Post reports.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the changes early next week, The Post reports, banning it from national security cases for the first time.

"In the coming days, I will announce updated Justice Department guidance regarding profiling by federal law enforcement," he said in a speech in Atlanta on Monday.

"This will institute rigorous new standards and robust safeguards to help end racial profiling, once and for all. This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing."

The Justice Department has been working on the changes for five years.

According to The Post, the new changes will prevent FBI agents from considering factors like religion and national origin when opening cases, though the agency will be allowed to continue the policy of "mapping" certain ethnic groups to obtain data used to open investigations and recruit informants.

The TSA and key parts of Customs and Border Protection also will also be exempt, The Post reports, citing unnamed law enforcement officials.

President George W. Bush banned racial profiling in 2003, but the prohibition didn't apply to national security investigations and only covered race — not religion, national origin or sexual orientation.

All will be covered under the new policy, The Post reports.

According to The Post, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson had argued while his department didn't condone profiling, immigration and customs agents and airport screeners needed to consider a variety of factors to keep the nation safe.

TSA officials, meanwhile, argued they shouldn't be covered by the new limits on the grounds it is not a law enforcement agency.

"We tend to have a very specific clientele that we look for," one federal official involved in immigration enforcement told The Post.

"If you look at numbers, the vast majority of people we deal with are Hispanic. Is that profiling, or just the fact that most of the people who come into the country happen to be Hispanic?

"It’s not like you’re a cop on a beat, which is an entirely different situation."

Long-awaited changes in the Justice Department's rules for racial profiling will exempt much of the Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, The Washington Post reports.